The Power of Promotion! On-line Marketing For Toastmasters Club Growth. Rae Stonehouse
graphic editing/screen capture program called Snagit.
I can cut & paste relatively easily but don’t have a huge talent in graphic artistry. This simple cover photo serves the purpose of getting the message across of who we are, our website address and our summer meeting schedule. Once Autumn rolls around we will change the text to something more promotional.
This cover photo took me five or more attempts to upload. The billboard with the club name on it had to be manoeuvred so that it would be visible behind the Profile Picture i.e. the Toastmasters International 90th graphic. As well, the dark blue text on the light blue background had to be manipulated so that it would not interfere with the visibility of the club name and category and the Contact Us, Liked & Share buttons. When studying this graphic for the purposes of writing this paragraph I have realized that there would have been value in posting the club contact’s phone number, just above the website address. Oh well!
How to Install a Cover Photo (similar to a banner on a website)
A small camera icon will be visible, in the top right corner of a Facebook Page when you are the Administrator for a particular site.
Clicking on the camera icon will prompt you to Change Cover.
Clicking on this box will give you the following options:
Clicking on Choose from Photos will allow you to choose from photos already uploaded to your Facebook Page. You would possibly do this if you were changing or updating your banner rather than a first time install.
Clicking on the Upload photo link will open a File Upload box that displays the directory listings from your computer. Simply locate and highlight the graphic you want to upload and click on Open. It will then, hopefully, upload to the banner position in the top of your Facebook Page. I say hopefully because this process can take several times to work properly.
Your Pages Cover Photo has to be within certain size parameters to display properly.
The image you upload must be at least 399px wide–one that’s at least 720px wide will work best. You can upload a photo already cropped and resized to precisely those sizes. Or you can upload a larger image, in which case you’ll be given a chance to move the image to choose the crop you’d like displayed.
•Displays at 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall on your Page
•For profile pictures and cover photos with your logo or text, you may get a better result by using a PNG file.
Example of Facebook Cover Page Display Sizes:
Note: There are 72 px (pixels per inch)
How to Create & Upload a Profile Picture (small photo)
The Profile Picture is the smaller, square at bottom left of the header, overlapping the Cover Photo.
You have to upload an image at least 180px by 180px. It’s displayed at 160px by 160px. (Its “natural” size is actually resized to 168px by 168px, but it’s only displayed at 160px by 160px.) The thin white border is added automatically and there’s no way to remove it.
If you use a photo that’s not square, you have some control over which part of the image to use for the crop. When you’re logged in, hover over the profile image and choose “Edit Profile Picture” and then “Edit Thumbnail”.
You can then click on the crop lines to choose the part of the image you want to use.
Tip: If you find that your resulting profile picture, after it’s downsized in Facebook, is blurry, try uploading an image twice the size of the downsized image (that is, an image that is 320px by 320px). That should give a sharper result.
Profile Picture on the Timeline
The profile image that appears next to your name on comments and posts is the same image but is automatically scaled down to 32px by 32px.
We will explore how to add graphics to your Timeline a little later on.
Navigational Links
A little ways back in our discussion of Cover Photos I made a quick reference to the Contact Us, Liked & Share buttons. (illustrated in the graphic below)
The first button, identified in the graphic above as Contact Us, is actually called the Call-to-Action button. Facebook added this feature a while back to help businesses attract web traffic to their business websites.
Page Administrators can select from a group of call-to-action buttons — like Shop Now or Sign Up — to add to the top of their Page. The seven calls to action available are:
•Book Now
•Contact Us
•Use App
•Play Game
•Shop Now
•Sign Up
•Watch Video
Starting with the basics, if you don’t see a Call-to-Action button in your Cover Photo take the following steps to create one:
1.Go to your Page’s cover photo and click Create Call to Action.
2.Choose your call to action, and enter the URL for your website.
3.Click Create.
While this feature appears to be quite beneficial for businesses to use, I believe it to be somewhat limited for our use as Toastmaster’s clubs. The Contact Us button if utilized, allows the Page visitor to click and go directly to your Toastmaster’s club website, assuming you have one. This can save them time from having to look for your website address buried somewhere in your content.
Alternatively, if you have a video that promotes your club and encourages guests to visit your club, you may want to add the Watch Video button.
Liked Button:
The Liked button (see below) dropdown menu provides you with some additional parameters for personalizing your Facebook Page.
The last button visible on the Cover Photo doesn’t seem to have a name and is identified as …
View as Page visitor allows you to view your Toastmasters club Facebook Page as a Page visitor or to stop viewing as a Page visitor. When you login to Facebook and visit any site that you are an Administrator, the administrative view